Literature Which I Revile

All---

Revile might be too strong word.

No.

It's not.

It's probably imprecise, though.  There is some literature, however, which causes me mental and physical agony.  Reading it is like the metaphorical fingernails on chalkboard.  My nerves tense, my ears close, my face contorts, and I feel like ice water is dropping down my spine.

I'm not talking about pulp romances or mass market westerns or out-of-the-box dungeons-and-dragons fantasy novels.

No, no.

I'm talking about this:



'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe


And also a bit of this:


He never will know if the Gick or the Goor
fits into the Skrux or the Snux or the Snoor.


I feel like a traitor to the English speaking world.  I feel as if I am turning my back on childhood itself.  I feel like I am thumbing my nose at Wonder with a capital a W and Imagination with a capital I.  Nevertheless, words mean things, and empty words are a paradox my spirit cannot manage.  Nonsense poetry (like the above snippets from Lewis Carroll's "The Jabberwocky" and Dr. Seuss's Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?) gives me fits.

It's all Vogon poetry to my ear.


Oh freddled gruntbuggl
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee


And we all know that Vogon poetry is widely recognized as the third worst poetry in the Universe.

It's a real hang-up.  I recognize that it's personal, and I wage no campaign to burn all such books or to ban them from schools and libraries.  It being a personal reaction doesn't make it any less real, though.

There's a real difference, two between nonsense and absurdity or surrealism.  I can handle distorted reality.  I can handle the shocking, impossible juxtaposition of incompatible realities.  Nonsense, however, is another matter altogether.  A word without meaning has no reality -- and, yet, there it is.  This breaks my brain and gives me the creepy-crawlers.  In fact, nonsense poetry gives me the same sense of moral indignation as riddles (which are linguistic cheats) and the same reaction of, "Did you really run out of words in our vast collection of world language?" as scat singing.  But even if I set those feelings aside, I cannot wrap my mind around the use of words that are not words at all.

Isn't that just Smurftastic?

.Nevets.

Story - "Gulping Amaretto"

"Gulping Amaretto"

by C. N. Nevets, (c) 2010

Jimmy was so thin and pale I thought his veins might just fall out, but when we sat down at the little round table, he was the one who was bursting with smiles and energy. 

“I don't know how you do it, man,” I admitted, idly glancing at the grease-smeared menu in front of me.  “You're forty-five and you're grinning like you're nineteen.”

“Lovin' life, brother, that's all it is.  Lovin' life.”  His voice was strong, but hoarse.  He'd had three shows this week, and his style of singing would have strained anyone's vocal chords.   He glanced over at the girl behind bar.  “I'm thirstier than hell, hon, just gimme a couple glasses of water with a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of sugar, and then keep 'em coming 'till I say no more.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Heroine.”

I rolled my eyes.   Jimmy Heroine.  His stage name.  Used to just be something people called him because he was so stretched out and empty looking.  Now the young ones thought it was his real name.  What a world.

I gave her my order.  “I'll have a scotch with a pinch of  scotch and a teaspoon of scotch.   Keep 'em coming 'till I say no more.”

Jimmy eyeballed me, his eyes popping out of their sunken sockets.   “You doin' okay there, brother?”

“Yeah, not bad,” I  assured him, shrugging my upper arms and laughing a couple times through my nose. 

“Whatcha painting right now?”

Where was that damn scotch?  I looked at the menu again, a little more intently.  I thought the word behind the thick smear of dried ketchup was hamburger, but it could have been ham sandwich.  “Just painting little things here and there, you know?  Stuff for family mostly.”

“Working a lot?”

“Feels like all the time.”   I looked at the girl behind the bar.  She was fixing his waters.  There wasn't a bottle of scotch anywhere near  her.   “Gotta pay the bills, you know?  It's good job, too.  I like the people I work with and I'm in quality assurance now, in management, so it's really good.  But definitely a lot of hours.”

“You're gonna go insane, bro bro.”  Jimmy tapped out drum rolls on the table surface with his nail-like fingers.  “You're a painter, not some retail guy.  Your stuff's good.  That one you did with the face, and the blue background, and it was like you could feel what it must be like to be God when you looked at it – I still have dreams about that painting.”

The girl set his waters down and then asked me, “What was it you said you wanted?  Beer?”

“Scotch.”  I tried not to snarl.

“Right, scotch.”  She turned back to Jimmy.  “Anything else, Mr. Heroine?  You want some fries or something? My treat.”

“Sure, honey, that'd be great, thanks.”

I meant to swear under my breath, but I just swore.  They both gave me looks of surprise and reproach.   Grimacing, I picked up the menu to hide behind.  Didn't last long.  I smacked it down on the table.  “You living off your music these days?”

“Hell no,” Jimmy laughed, grinning.  As if the laugh pained him, he winced and then applied gentle pressure to his side.  “We have a lot of shows, but we play for drinks and a hundred bucks to split.  Stuff like that.  It's about the love, brother.  The art.”

“You can't live on art.”

“Hell no,” Jimmy agreed, laughing again.  “But I get by.”

“Still selling your blood?”

“Yep.”

“And your sperm?”

“Yep.”

“You look like death, man.”  I meant it as a judgment against his lifestyle.

He brushed it off.  “That's the operation, that's all.”

“Operation?”

As the girl brought me what looked and smelled like an amaretto sour, Jimmy lifted his t-shirt.  In addition to the sharp relief of his ribs, I could see a scar on his left side.  “Kidney,” he said.

“Cancer?” I asked.

“Not sure.”  He lowered the shirt and drained one of the glasses of water.  “Not mine, whatever it was.  I donated it, brother.”

“Donated?  How are you healthy enough to donate a kidney?”

“The kinda guys who pay you in cash for your kidney don't do a physical first, know what I mean?”

I stared at the drink that had been placed in front of me.  My voice was distant.  “You sold your kindey?  Sold?  Your kidney?”

“Gotta pay the bills, ya know?”  Again, Jimmy laughed.  His laugh was warm and convivial, even when it was hoarse like it was.

“You're insane.”

“Hey, it lets me make money and still sing, I'm cool with it.”

I shook my head and crossed my arms across my chest,  sitting in stiff condescension.  “It's a slippery slope.  Where's it going to stop, Jimmy?  Blood, sperm, kidneys -- pieces of your liver?”

“I dunno.”  He was grinning, but his his were sharp and shadowed. “You tell me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm just selling my body for my art, brother, you're selling your soul.”

I gulped at the amaretto sour and my eyes searched the room for anything to look at other than Jimmy's grin.

FIN

.Nevets.

Mama Said Blog You Out

All---

Don't call it a come back; I've been here for days.

Just not on the internet.

As often happens, the holiday and vacation time came with nearly as many obligations and crises as they did moments of relaxation and enjoyment, and both my writing and my social networking suffered for it.

It's always interesting, though, when I finally get a moment to reflect from a writer's perspective.  Of the crises, a small handful were "real."  (The transmission on my wife's car failed, for instance.)  Most of them, however, were "self-created."  (Frustration over lack of getting done things I wanted to, for example, or facing the bleak specter of returning to work.)

Thing is, the emotional hook is far stronger on the latter sort.  We still don't have the transmission taken care of and are utterly unsure what we're going to do about that.  But we made it home safely, there was nothing terribly frightening the car dying at 55MPH on the highway, and we will figure out how to manage the repair (or not) in due time.  I'm worried about it, but there isn't a heavy impact of that worry on my day.

On the other hand, I'm still stressed over how little I got done, and I have to actively stop myself from feeling hopeless about the job, where we're living, etc.  That's where the real tension is.  That's the stuff that really has me in a bind, that is shaping my character on a minute-by-minute basis and having a direct impact on what I do and how I behave.

So, to all us genre writers: you know those literary stories where "nothing happens"?

That's why.

Because in real life, inner turmoil is often way more powerful than hijinks and adventure in a place filled with wonder.

.Nevets.